Living the Dream

I sent Jim a text with “Living the dream” at the end of it today, and I think that does fit my new situation. I love working part time from home! A typical work day for me used to look like getting up at 6:30 AM, leaving by 7:45 AM, and returning after spending a couple of hours in the car. And then I days I didn’t work in Kent, I was managing the house and family while balancing travel for trainings and content development for a couple of different companies… and teaching an online class or two.

First day of new job – 9/1/16. Photo by Haley.

Now my alarm goes off at 6 AM, but that’s because I want to get up and be dressed, do my Bible study and drink hot tea in my chair, and check in with my work schedule before I wake the kids up at 7 AM. We eat family breakfast at 7:45 AM, and then everyone leaves about 8 AM… except for me. I stay home, mostly. And every day is different!

Some days I have a lot of meetings and others I am wide open. I have time to go to a kickboxing class at the Y, go on a run, walk with a neighbor, or do pilates at home. I swing into the grocery store sometimes, although mostly I’ve moved that to the weekends. I am signed up to volunteer at the kids’ school on Thursday mornings, and I’m attending Bible study at our church on Friday mornings. In between, I work on emails and projects from the comfort of my office. Or couch. Or chair. Or kitchen table. And then I rotate laundry, and prep dinner, and get ready for after school commitments like soccer and gymnastics. Every day, I take a lunch break and eat my salad and read for a little while in my quiet house. It’s nice. I resigned three of the five companies I was working for. Things are getting simpler.

Training day!

I do still have some away from home opportunities, like a training series in Seattle that I do once a month. But I’m still home in time to get the kids of the bus in the afternoon, which is awesome! Sometimes I lead a training right here in South Kitsap, five minutes from my house, for an hour one evening. The kids just eat dinner at my parents’ house and I’m back to take them to their evening event. And then about once a month I spend 24 hours gone to San Diego to train the AVID faculty on using their new devices and services to do their jobs well. It’s nice to stay sharp with training, since I now support other trainers and it’s easy to get “out of the game” if you’re not still doing professional development. What’s funny is that I was doing about the same amount of travel before, but combined with working away from home two long days a week and doing content development for my company on the side. So I’ve reduced my total amount of work. Hooray!

The kids said they feel like I’m home a LOT more, and they are very happy about that. And since I’m home more, I get more done during the day, so I’m not scrambling to get chores and two hours more work done when Jim walks in at 9 PM. And he appreciates that. 🙂